For Barton
by Brandysaur
Summary: Clint goes through Natasha's nightstand and finds... A poetry journal? More to come.
1. Stop Reading This

_Clint smiles as he rises from his stooping position. Oh, the things you find in Natasha's nightstand._

_The book has the words DO NOT READ engraved across the spine. It is jagged and dirty._

_Day One: _

_Clint, don't read this shit. I told you to stay out of my stuff._

_Seriously, you can put it down now._

_Thank you._

_xoxo_

_I can't think of a fucking title, I told you to stop looking at this. Stop judging me._

I have this sinking feeling that love

is for children, and only rabbits

fuck like we do and consider it a

job

well

done.

You kissed me under willow trees

and forgot my name,

so instead of whispering something

meaningful, you

call me a

widow.

I retch into the corner,

ashamed of my body, and you light a dark

cigar that smells of wine

and blackberries.

I feel dissociated

and

somnambulant

in a torrent of smoky wishes that crash

amongst the rocks.

Do you know what it's like?

To be unmade?

I am

the shrieking killdeer

that disappears when a dog wanders

just

too

close.

this nightmare is endless and my life,

worthless.

tendrils of smoke and chains encircle my wrists

and pull me down.

I am little else but your

paid for harlot,

and you, a solemn

nightwalker, mixed in a mugging that has

gone too far.

I know they sent you to end my life,

but you made a different call.

So show me, can you touch me with featherlight

caresses that leave me breathless?

My vision is bathed in red

and staggered with circling hawks,

corpse pickers that

call me to my end.

Remake me.

Show the rabbits

they

are

wrong.


	2. Daisies

_Clint's chest feels heavy. He turns the page, his hands shaking._

_Page two_

You are a murderer.

But then, I

suppose,

we all are.

You took my hands today and brought them to your

lips.

I guess I

always thought I was

the one who killed with

sweetness

and venom.

I brought you daisies

and baby's breath

and left them at your side.

In your sleep, you turned and

crushed them,

perfuming the air

with a bitter,

hallow scent.

Wake up.

Wake.

Up.

We sit amongst the thunder god,

the genius men who create

their universal destruction,

and the man whose face defines an era.

How sad that

we are mere mortals,

and these men will know more swelling in

their hearts in an hour than we could

in a lifetime

of sinking deep into eachother's

bodies.

I sought a friend, Clint Barton,

but you became my life.

Obsession begets obsession,

and the widow has lost her voice.

What is more frightening than a spider

in the night?

Those three words

that bed each night behind your teeth?

The hawk circles and

dives for prey,

leaving me hanging by silken thread.

Alone.

I am flame and you

won't come near a gunshot wound,

but, sir, I need a tourniquet.

_Clint wonders what the date was that this was penned. They had… at the moment… an interesting relationship. They spent every night together, but it always ended in silence. Clint and Natasha. It would always be that way. He wondered how much was unspoken between them that Natasha needed to say. He remembers vaguely waking up… months ago… With dying flowers underneath him. He tossed them on the floor and never gave them another thought. Clint feels sick to his stomach._


	3. What's in a face?

_Days later, Clint returns to Natasha's bedside. His stomach churns and bile rises in his throat: He is a hunter, testing the height of the waves. How best to know the spider than to study her in depth?_

_He turns the page. This one is stained with water, so the ink runs across the page. Water, or…_

I am certain that I am blind:

How can it be that the face of a child,

murdered with a single shot, can escape my memory?

I sit alone and hear her scream.

I cannot picture her, though when I try, I see

a mirror.

That babe is not me.

I brought the monster, the blade-talon

cock making bloodthirsty lunges

at the audience that bets. She reaches into the caverns

of my mind

in a perpetual stretch and claws her

way out, echoing into daylight.

I should know her. I held her face in the sight of my gun and let

lose upon her darkness eternal,

but all I know is the sound of her

death

rattle.

So, _Clint muses. He swallows hard and feels hot stinging in the corners of his eyes. He knew this, he thinks. He knew her past and her heartbreak and her blank stare when the gun cocked in her hand and she was set to kill. There was no emotion in her eyes when she was on a mission. Things were set in stone, and she was but a marble pawn in the games the highest bidders so often play._

_He remembers the face of the first child he was charged to kill; a boy of twelve, thin and dirty from hiding in ditches while his wartorn city was burned to ashes. He was the son of his real target. It was simple and quick: _Take him out_ they said. _It won't matter. No one will question it. _And just like that, a child staggered in front of him, his brilliant green eyes dulled but widened with shock. He whispered _I see them_ and Clint ducked as the child crumpled in front of him, blood forming an ink-black pool around his chest. He breathed and sighed, making the sound of someone falling into a comforting mattress. Clint sank into the ground, rolling to the left just before a sniper hit the earth where Clint had been standing. The little boy Clint had killed had warned him he was about to be shot._

_Clint closed the book and burned it beneath Natasha's underthings, ignoring the lace and spandex, hooks and garters. He sat on the edge of the bed and sobbed into his arms in a silent torrent of terror and regret. The scars on his body may have healed, but Clint knows he, and Natasha, have a long way to go._


	4. The Beginning of the End

_In the coming weeks, Clint makes an effort to be kinder. Not just to Natasha, but to everyone he meets. He owes it to them, because after all, how can he know their suffering? He has caused so much himself- but he can start to forgive. And so can they._

_Clint walks through the park and retrieves a child's dog from the river: He had escaped his leash and run like a lemming to the rushing of the water, so Clint steps in immediately._

_Soaked and filthy, he returns the dog and receives no thanks, but smiles nonetheless._

_The girl was frightened and horrified, but he knew he had done something worthwhile._

_He buys a cane for a woman who clearly needs it, but cannot spare the money._

_He overhears her talking in a payphone: "I can walk or I can eat. I don't know which I'd prefer…"_

_He brings it to her minutes later: "Ma'am, I believe you left this in the lobby."_

_She stands, shaking, without saying a word. Clint takes her hand and closes it around the handle of the cane._

"_Have a nice day, ma'am."_

_Later, Natasha returns home from a mission and collapses on her bed, exhausted, her hair henna dyed a deep brown, faux piercings across her brow, and a half-sutured gunshot wound to her shoulder. Seeing the glint of buried shrapnel, Clint undressed her while she falls into a stupor and washes her wounds with iodine. She does not flinch. With tweezers and an archer's expert hands, he pulls the pieces of the bullet out one by one: fragmentation is a bitch. Clint gently rubs antimicrobial ointment into the wound and sews it shut with silk thread and a titanium needle: Natasha is allergic to surgical steel. He ties the sutures off and clips them with his teeth._

_He sits near her naked, vulnerable form while she dances behind her eyelids- the rest of someone worked half to death. She is not living until she rests. Then, Clint knows, she experiences happiness and excitement and joy- the emotions she is not capable of in the daylight hours, riddled with calls from Coulson, threats from government entities… There are times where Clint follows her and picks off would-be attackers._

_Except… Natasha usually picks them off first._

_Clint is emotionally charged and reckless, but Natasha, in her cold calculation, never misses a beat._

_She is ice and he is fire._

_He pulls a fleece blanket over her chest and tucks her in, taking care to avoid her shoulder wound. He kisses her on the forehead and whispers her name._

_Clint takes this opportunity to pull the journal out once again._

начало и конец

The Beginning of the End

When I was six years old, I had a dog that crawled to me

in a ditch outside of Moscow.

His jaw was broken, his front paws crushed, and yet

he persevered, taking careful step and drag,

one foot, and another,

only to fall and yowl a tortured cry for help.

At the crest of his helplessness

I fled to the streets and carried him, wrapped in my shawl,

the fifteen miles home.

I called him

Стрелка. My Arrow. And he was more

my family than the dead eyed mother

that bore me or the

gambler that sired my

broken childhood body.

We sat outside bathed in furs in the dead, northern winter

and I set a splint to his legs.

He healed with my heart and I felt a warmth grow within my chest.

My ribs

felt less a cage

and more a boundary for an endless

capacity

to

endure.

Three skimashed men came that day and Arrow licked their

hands.

Men's voices tintinnabulated and made my heart

ache with a joy and senselessness

I know now would change me

for the rest of my gilded life.

The golden sound

enveloped me like

the rays of the sun in the early hours of daybreak.

The taller man took my dog and

slashed his throat with a buck knife

and held his squirming, screaming body above my tired, wretched legs,

pouring blood across them until they froze.

The gold I saw changed immediately to sulfur and burned

my skin.

"You don't need this, you disgusting whore.

You are _our_ dog now."

_Clint sets the book down for the third time._

_He fears hearing her stories more than she fears remembering them_


	5. Whispers and Bloodshed

_The feather fingered archer slings a backpack across his shoulders and rummages through the top drawer in the kitchen. Natasha has a habit of hiding his arrowheads when she fears he will disappear into the night, but Clint needs to hunt. His prize almost extends to meet his waiting hand as he grasps the set of heads, jet black, with stripped threads around the base from repeated use. He is ready._

_Braces on, boots laces tight, and quiver loaded, Clint tests the bowstring and curls his middle and index finger around the steely wire. He pulls back, feeling the pressure of more than a hundred pounds pulling at him, and lets lose the unloaded bow. This, he thinks, is what power feels like._

_ "_Clint?" _Natasha whispers from behind him. Her voice sounds small. He turns to find her standing in the doorway, surrounded by the pitch blackness that accompanies a loveless house in the dead of night. Tash's hair is pulled together at the base of her neck and tied in a simple knot. It is mussed as the night is cold, greasy, and speaks of less than restful sleep, but still, Clint thinks, she is beautiful._

_ Clint allows his gaze to soften at the sight of her form. She comes forward a single step from within the darkness and reveals her dressing gown draped around her and tied at the waist, leaving a wide triangle of flesh exposed just above the curve of her breasts. She tugs at the hem, pulling it passed her hips, and uses her thumb to smooth an eyebrow. Clint is aware of the frigid air, and wonders why the temperature is dropped so low. He contemplates bringing a jacket._

_ "Hey, love." _

_ Instinctively, he reaches to Natasha and pulls her into his arms. The backpack is forgotten and slides from his shoulders, and hits the ceramic tiles with a sharp thud. The bow and quiver meet the same fate; The arrows fall from his fingers as they are replaced with the warm skin of the widow. She breathes into his chest and Clint is struck by the realization, slow to dawn, at first, that Natasha has been crying. Her face is soft and wet from tears, and when he leans to kiss her eyes, tastes the bitterness she is doubtlessly carrying. His heart aches. Natasha pinches her eyes shut and wraps her arms around him, bringing her hands together behind his back. A wet and lovely warmth spreads from her arms to his body, enveloping him with a sense of security and adoration._

_ Clint knows this embrace as well as he knows the instantaneous feeling when he watches an arrow pierce the heart of a target. It is climactic, apologetic and essential for his survival, and Natasha has become an integral part of his heart managing to beat._

_ Especially now. After everything he knew._

_ As if he could ever let her fucking go._

_ She is death and life and Gaia and God and stained with blood and screaming, but he could not breathe a word of changing her in a single way. So he stands, with the widow nestled into his body, daring the world to strike her, so he can let lose his vengeance upon the world without remorse._

_ Clint feels Nat's eyelashes flutter against his cheek, more gentle than the silken sheets they bed with each night. The two whisper to one another, snippets of tenderness neither of them had felt in years. Clint leads Natasha to the bedroom and tucks her in, his icy eyes flickering in the dark, taking her in. He lies next to her and wraps his arms around her and holds her close until her breathing is even and her chest rises and falls at the same rate, over and over._

_ He slides his arms from her body and sits up on the bed. His hands find their way to the ceiling and he stretches deep and hard, sighing, wishing he could lay down the arrows and sleep through the night, but first, there is work to do._

_ Clint stands and shuffles from the bedroom, closes the door behind him, conscious of the sound the latch makes when it snaps shut, and sidesteps into the bathroom._

_And then…_

_ The smell of fear that permeates the air goes beyond the experience of scent. It is almost audible, like the sickening crack that accompanies a broken femur. His heart sank to the floor and races from him, ripping from his chest. His mouth is dry._

_ He is met with two horrifying things that bring the bile into his throat:_

_The first is Natasha's battered journal, lying on the floor, pages splayed open next to a pool of water._

_The second is the amount of blood in the bathroom sink._

_Clint searches in absolute terror around the various implements sitting near the basin: Lotions, a bottle of sleeping pills, off brand shaving cream, and he finds it: a dismantles straight razor._

_Clint looks at his hands, and finds them smeared with blood, at this point, nearly dry._

_He screams Natasha's name and bolts into the bedroom, shaking her over and over, hissing, growling, dropping hot, wet tears on her chest._

"_NATASHA, WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO-" he snarls through tears._

_Natasha rouses and weakly turns, enough to reveal the dozens of cuts across her arms. Not deep, but numerous, raw, and glued shut with the blackness of dried blood._

"Clint…" _She smiles and closes her eyes. "You're still here."_

_The dread fades, but Clint's tears do not. He finds a package of butterfly bandages at the foot of the bed, already torn open, blood staining the closure flaps. She was going to patch herself up, but then… What?_

_He remembers the journal in the other room, but could not bring himself to leave her side._


	6. We don't talk about last night

_There was a certain air about her being- just the fact that she existed, the sheer, insurmountable unlikelihood of her birth, that yes, indeed, Natasha Romanoff would be born and broken in such a way that she was here, was enough to make Clint's heart swell. Her proud and hidden poise, her lips pursed with the corners of her mouth curled into the whisper of a smile, her tactful, ironic, yet coy remarks that made him chuckle even when he loathed to be in the same room with her._

_Yes, the widow knew how to bite him._

_He remembers the moment he held a gun to her head and asked her if she was ready to die. _

_Back when S.H.I.E.L.D. mandated he carry a gun._

_The weight felt foreign in his hand._

_His brows were furrowed into a deep, shadowy "v" and his mouth was pulled into a maddening grin. Another mission, check. He cocked the silver in his hand and inhaled sharply, his chest suddenly inflated with the pressure from the frozen Siberian winter._

_She did not beg. She did not plead with him. She met his icy eyes with her warm ones and whispered _"I died a long time ago. You'll just be claiming my body."

_Then, there was a certain air about her. A haunting melodious whisper that followed her and held her down at Clint's mercy. He tightened his grip on his Smith and Wesson and swallowed hard, feeling thick saliva trail down his throat. Natasha was kneeling quietly, waiting. She closed her eyes, lowered her head and made her final peace. She muttered words under her breath that Clint couldn't make out. _

_Clint had a clear shot. It would take half a second, and he doubted she would feel a thing but remorse for a life spent murdering, lying, and torturing. _

_But then, in those furious seconds, he saw her lip quiver. _

_She knows fear._

"Just do it, Clint Barton."_ The crackling sound she made was painful to the ear._

I wonder if that's lipstick or blood that's stained her mouth.

_That was it. The way she said his name, the way she was so vulnerable: Some semblance of humanity has escaped genocide from the Russians who raised her, who held her captive and forced her to do things that would shatter the sanity of anyone less strong than her._

_The gun never made it back to the holster. There were people watching from behind the wide aperture of lenses, people from S.H.I.E.L.D. , and as soon as they realized what he did they shot it from his hand. I guess, Clint thought, They didn't want Tash to get it. But she had come prepared. She stood and struck Clint in the chest with force enough to knock the wind from his lungs. He sucked in the frozen air and fell, holding his ribs, certain that one was cracked. He staggered, stood, and open fire in a semicircular motion, back to back with the Black Widow. They moves in unison, left, then right, until Natasha pressed a loaded clip into Clint's free hand and pulled a second gun from the holster strapped to his calf._

_ They danced for what seemed like hours, circling one another, diving to the ground, rising, and trading life for life and clip for clip._

_ Clint knew they had saved each other countless times that night alone, and yet, as Natasha still says, _"I owe him a debt."_  
_

You don't owe me shit, Natasha, _Clint thinks.  
_

_Clint watches the first dewdrops of morning fall from the window in his- well, their- bedroom. Natasha hadn't opened a single eye since the awful night before, and Clint, true to himself, has not left her side. Still dressed in his night stalking clothes, he has his arms wrapped around her, his face caked with salt trails from sobbing through the night. Maybe Fury was right._

"Your fear controls you, Clint." _He said once._

_Clint laughed. "_I don't think it does. Just because you can't see what's not in front of your face doesn't mean there's something wrong with me when I can."

"Isn't there something wrong?" _Fury stared him down and Clint felt a pang of anger. The hawk did not fear a thing._

"A few weeks ago, we sent Natasha on a mission. She came back injured."

He remembered. "Yeah? What's your point?"

"You spent the entire time drowning yourself in Everclear." _ Fury stared down at his hands and cracked each of his knuckles individually, with a deep, penetrating pop. "Everclear._"

"I don't see your point." _Clint rolled his eyes and touched the base of his quiver, strapped to his back, per usual._

"We needed you and you never once answered the call."

_Clint felt sick. He knew exactly what Fury was on about, though be barely remembered the time Nat was gone; His phone had about 45 missed calls and texts that he instantly deleted. He didn't even bother to read a voicemail._

"You were so consumed with fear that she would be hurt, you completely incapacitated yourself. Does THAT sound like a member of a mother fucking team?" _Fury's namesake was threatening to break loose. _

"Look, when she got back, I took care of her. You sure as fuck didn't. She needed to be in the hospital, and instead, I spent the night stitching her up and helping her fight a fever."

_End of conversation, Fury._

_Clint sits up in bed. He was disgusted with himself. What happened to the guy that never misses because he can't? Who did he have, really?_

_Himself?_

_His arrows?_

_Natasha?_

_While the widow slept, Clint inhales deeply and rises from bed. He heads to the bathroom and plucks the journal from the floor, glad that the blood had drained from the sink and the water had dried from the tiles into a mottled mark._

_He leans against the wall and flips the journal open and finds a poem, with paragraphs blacked out, words scratched, and streaks of read across the page. This is unlike her._

You told me once

that you love me. A joke

I guess, since we had just met

and I pressed into your hand

a cup of coffee.

You told me once

that we were friends, Barton.

One. Fucking

Time.

And never mentioned it again.

So excuse me if I feel sick

when I hear your voice, uneasy when you press your lips to mine.

I'm unsure

that you expect my affection when yours

is an affliction I bear each day.

I can stop myself from murder long enough

to whisper "I love you"

but you'd leave me half dead before

you brought me back to life.

I fucking hate you

Because you refuse me what if mine.

You shoot me with 9 mm rounds

from your piercing gaze and I die

a little inside every time we fuck.

I need

your voice

and touch

to be infused with my soul

but until then I have

steel and blood

to keep

me company

amongst my living nightmares.

You and I

Together

Dancing in the drizzle

of bloodshed.

This is what life

is,

carrion and laughter.

We are sick

as wolfdogs

that scavenge and roam,

infected with rabies and biting

children until they are

afflicted

with the sourness

of unmentioned

adoration.

_Clint shuts the book and sighs. She's right and he knows it._

_But he loves her so fucking much it hurts to think about._

_The question is; can either of them afford this anymore?_

_Once, when her life was on the line, Clint made a different call._

_He adjusts his shirt and the straps around his forearm and steps lightly back into the bedroom. He leans near Natasha, whose eyes have barely begun to flutter and shake the sleep from her eyes._

"Natasha."

_She opens her eyes slowly and stares at him, stone faced._

_He places the book near her head._

"Natasha Romanoff. I want you to know… that I am absolutely, undeniably, irrevocably in love with you. And nothing will ever fucking change that." _He cracks his voice unintentionally and feels foolish._

_Natasha sighs and smiles, sinking back into her pillow._

"I know, Clint." _Her voice is no longer small and weak._

_She traces the sharp lines of his jaw with her bloodstained fingertips and pulls on his collar, beckoning him to bed. Clint is at her mercy._

"But stay the fuck out of my stuff."


	7. Run For It

_Natasha twirls with her cobalt veil wrapped around her, as if she were a flower before morning, swollen with life and ready to unfold with the first touch of light. She spun in soft circles, branding the ground with the tips of her toes and the rough edges of her feet, and slowly opened to the world. Her arms fan around her and she became a galaxy, spinning faster and faster, the sequins and rhinestones on her semi translucent veil became the wings of one magnificent cosmic bird of paradise. The women around her chant in strange tongues, their collective voice ringing out through the night, drawing the eyes of the passerby, insects to a sealed off world they only wish they could enter._

_ Clint stood in the crowd and clapped, slapping the backs of the other men. The dance was a way of life, and both Clint and Natasha had infiltrated and become Roma._

_ Days later, they break away, hand in hand, laughing uneasily, feeling their thighs to insure their weapons were secure. The fear never quite fell from them, but now, here, in the joy and the livelihood of those they had met, it was manageable and they were safe._

_ Clint feels alone with his memories more often than not. Natasha is distant. She is the killer, he is the marksman; and he tries to push the fact that there was a real and vicious difference out of his mind. He kisses her arms and tried to push the scars back into her skin. She barely acknowledges that they exist. She pushes him back and when he ventured to her painted mouth, turns her face so the kisses miss her lips and meet, instead, the snowy curve of her cheek._

_ There are days, now, where they do not say a word. Clint cooks for her and contemplates slicing off his fingers instead of the carrots or zucchini, just to see if she will lay down her own thoughts and care for him the way he does her. _

_ Tonight he finds her in bed, her arms wrapped around her knees, curled into the fetal position._

_She feels his presence._

"Clint?"

_His eyes do not leave the floor. He turns to the closet and shrugs his leather jacket from his shoulders and tosses it to the ground._

"Yeah." _he answers, but barely._

"I feel like I'm losing my mind."

_He knows. She has fallen deeper than she'll admit, and Clint has been there and back again. He found his salvation, and right now, his salvation is bursting at the seams, threatening to disintegrate into the stardust from which she came._

_He swallows and sits on the edge of the bed._ "I know, Nat."

_Again. It's come to this, like it always does. Together, the spiral down through the depths of the darkest recesses of their minds and fall prey to the lives they were forced to live._

"It's choking me." _She whispers his name under her breath and swallows her tears._

_Clint's leans over and his mouth finds the hallow of her back and pours his soul into her._

_He makes a note to call Fury and tell him he's done._

_Assassins don't get vacations… so they would run away._

"Natasha, we're going leaving. Let's go."


End file.
